You want to improve your client experience while streamlining the back end of how you interact with them within your business. That’s where your customer relationship management, also known as CRM software, comes into place.

When researching CRM software, you’ll see many options, which can feel a bit overwhelming. While you can select one that has one specific purpose, selecting an all-in-one CRM can provide you with the support you need to tackle your various sales and marketing goals without adding more tools to your list to keep up with. 

What is a CRM Software

Your CRM software is designed to help you achieve your goals related to building a strong relationship with your customers and potential customers. Ultimately, that’s the purpose of your business and how you can not only increase your leads and put them in your funnel, but also develop a tribe of customers and potential customers who trust you, interact with you and want to grow with your business.

When you put all essential customer-based information into one CRM software, you can spend more time serving and supporting your audience and less time organizing yourself and looking for that one piece of information that got lost because your sticky note disappeared from your desk.

Examples of a CRM Software

• Mailchimp: Mailchimp solely focuses on providing email marketing and automation services for growing businesses.  
• ConvertKit: Convertkit provides a powerful email marketing platform for marketing automation to grow your audience and business. 

What Makes a CRM Software All-in-One?

A CRM Software is all-in-one when it incorporates all or the majority of the customer relationship based features you need to offer a quality professional experience from beginning to end.

When you find a CRM software that supports not only the ability to provide for your customers but also to keep your team organized and in the loop about each person in the system, you’ve found what you need.  

Examples of an All-in-One CRM Software

• Ontraport: Ontraport is a business automation software designed specifically for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and small businesses. It incorporates your CRM features along with marketing automation, eCommerce support, and analytic reporting.
• Keap: Keap is also designed for small businesses. It provides email marketing, marketing automation, lead capturing, eCommerce support, and more to help you manage and optimize the customer lifecycle. 

Features of an All-in-One CRM Software

When you choose an all-in-one CRM software vs. a standalone option, you’ll have access to many features that can help you and your team stay on the right track with both the marketing and sales components of customer relationship management. Here are some of the features you might expect. 

• Organize contact information: You can keep all relevant customer information in one place and update it as more becomes available or based on how he or she interacts with your business. 
• Lead nurturing: You can capture leads and nurture them with email marketing and other personalized marketing features.
• Email marketing: You can set up your email marketing to stay in communication with your audience.
• Lead scoring: You can automatically score your leads based on how they interact with your business to see how you should communicate with them to achieve your business goals.
• Sales pipeline: You can set up an automated sales pipeline to take your contacts from lead to customer on autopilot with notifications along the way when they reach specific interaction-based milestones in your business that require you to take additional steps. 
• Manage tasks: You can manage tasks, their due dates, and who is responsible for completing them.
• Track sales: You can track your sales to determine which efforts are producing the best results and pivot along the way to ensure that you reach your goals. 

Keep in mind with features that you can have too much of a good thing, so be sure that you have the training or support needed to successfully utilize your CRM. Otherwise, the features will feel more like a burden, by reducing your efficiency, than a business blessing by improving it. 

What You Want From Your All-In-One CRM Software

When looking for the best CRM software for your business, here are 4 features you want to look for to ensure that you set yourself up for success. 

Helpful Features

As listed above, your all-in-one CRM software includes many of the features that help you have a good understanding of what’s happening with your customers throughout the sales and marketing process.  

When you have all of this information at the tip of your fingertips, it can make it easier for you to see where your funnel is less effective and what is resonating well with your audience. It can help you determine what needs to be improved and what can stay the same with your sales and marketing. 

Ease of Use

If your CRM software isn’t easy to use, it won’t be used consistently or potentially at all. You don’t want that. So, be sure that your software isn’t too complicated for the skill level of those using it, so you can use it as designed to provide the best experience for your audience. 

Available Support Staff

If you do have issues or questions related to your CRM, you want the ability to get in contact with the support staff promptly. Customer support might come standard, or the level of support could vary based on the package you select. You should anticipate how much help you’ll need based on your degree of tech-savviness and be sure that your CRM software has the level of support that works for you. 

Streamlined Set Up

Finally, when setting up your CRM software, you want the system to offer a streamlined approach. You’ll be connecting it to other software you have, transferring data, and more, so you need a simple system in place to make it as easy as possible. If not, and you have to get support from an outside source, consider the cost of that as well when comparing CRM prices. 

Ready to set up your all-in-one CRM software? As an online business manager, I can help you both select the best system for your business, set it up for use and manage it moving forward. 

Schedule a free consultation so we can discuss the next best steps for your business. 

Disclaimer: This blog contains affiliate links. This does not impact the capability of the software nor does it increase the price, but it will support LaToya Russell at no additional cost to you!